Novice/casual development tools
 

I have been looking around for development tools to do simple GUI apps on the tablets and have not found anything suitable.

What I have in mind would be something vaguely like Hypercard/Pythoncard/VB using a scripting language - preferably Python. Above all it should be usable by just about any tablet owner without having to set up a complex development environment or acquire detailed knowledge of tablet internals, Hildonization, Gtk+, build systems, install systems etc...

Is there anything like this available? I have searched but found nothing. I thought that the OLPC folks would have something like this for Sugar, but I don't see anything there either.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Nice dream.
Me Too, Me Too...

I haven't found anything suitble either.
My idea was to try wxGlade and python but I am really new to all the UI stuff and I haven't found anybody who described the path for me - so my own research is veeery slow.
The bad news is that - as far as I understood it - libglade is not supported on chinook anymore.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

The simplest tool I know of is Gustavo Barbieri's Eagle framework :
http://blog.gustavobarbieri.com.br/

It uses Python, of course, and offers a simpler way to build Gtk/Hildon GUIs.

For novice/casual use, these portable languages and tools are really nice because you don't need to set up a complicated cross-platform development environment to be able to code on a (Windows, Linux) desktop and run the result on the tablet. It just happens.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Is Borland still around? Can we get the sources for ObjectVision?

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Eagle sounds nice.
Thanks, will have a look at it.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Yes, it does sound good. fpp, thanks for the pointer.

I also came across Pluthon: http://pluthon.garage.maemo.org/
and it looks like it would be possible to develop Eagle/Python apps in Eclipse (on any platform) and deploy and test directly on a tablet. No Scratchbox required.

Plus PLuthon uses Pydev which is very nice - I don't suppose it can use the Pydev debugger(?), but you can log to the Eclipse console from an app. running on the tablet.

Has anyone done this? I plan to try it out soon so any caveats would be welcome.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

I believe eclipse is overkill for Python/Eagle development. A good Python editor (such as SciTe, also available for Maemo) is quite enough. On a Windows desktop you just need to install Python, the Gtk runtime, and pyGtk. Then you code and test your app from within Scite. When you copy your code over to the tablet with the maemo version of Eagle, Hildonization is taken care of automatically.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

I like Eclipse/Pydev as an editor and debugger, but I don't want to get into emacs/vim/eclipse/<name your editor> debates. It is just a matter of my preference and comfort.

I do take your suggestions about installing GtK and pyGtk on a Windows box so that you can test locally. Thanks again.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Oh, if you're already used to Eclipse/Pydev that's different, of course. I was misled by the "Novice/casual" in the title, and responded with someone starting from scratch in mind...

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Only just. Borland spun off their developer products to Codegear:
http://www.codegear.com/

Delphi now costs about $2,000!!!

I don't see any mention of ObjectVision - according to Wikipedia they stopped development in 1992 ...

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Yes, you are right. I guess my question had two notions behind it.

One is that I want to be able to write some Q&D stuff for my own use and the second was that it seems to me that I am probably not alone in this desire so if something does not exist then that might make a nice project.

We seem to have lost a host of simple application development tools over the last few years (Hypercard, FoxPro) so that now it is quite hard to do personal programming - which folks used to do a lot. The IT is such a personal tool that it seems to cry out for a simple way to build small applications for it. Programming seems to have (mostly) become something that you either do professionally, or you pay somebody else to do for you.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Dang. I fondly remember it as being jolly good fun. Besides that, it's my opinion that forms-based metaphores should work very well on tablet devices.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Who needs borland/codegear when you have freepascal?
Last I heard, they abandoned kylix and there's no way to do cross-platform development with their tools, while with freepascal you have Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X/Darwin, Mac OS classic, DOS, Win32, Win64, WinCE, OS/2, Netware (libc and classic) and MorphOS under Intel x86, Amd64/x86_64, PowerPC, PowerPC64, Sparc, ARM (but no eabi atm:().
For a rad environment comparable to delphi (but that can generate cross-platform gui code for windows, wince, linux and mac os) take a look at lazarus maybe one day it'll be possible to use it to write hildon apps.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

I agree. One way to get around this, that I have used a couple of times, is to write web apps and use them locally (there are a few very easy Python web frameworks for novice/casual developpers that can be used for this, like Snakelets, Karrigell, and of course web.py). However you don't get the same sort of user interface as with a native GUI (except if you add AJAX to the mix, which is not so easy).

A few years ago there was a very interesting project named PythonCard that tried to recapture the ease of use and user-friendliness of HyperCard in Python. It is still around but unfortunately its creator lost interest and it doesn't seem to be moving much ; also it was based on wxPython (wxWidgets binding) which is a good GUI framework, but a bit on the heavy side for small platforms like the ITs...

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

ObjectVision wasn't a programming language, but a visual development tool. In fact, just about the only "code" you were supposed to know, were spreadsheet formulae (or at least something earily similar).

It was also not so much for developing applications, as a quick'n easy tool to input, access, visualise and process data. I liked it, because I could do stuff without having to program (for which I appear to have a genetic indisposition).

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Well, I don't know ObjectVision, I was just replying to the delphi part ;)
I do hope that someday one can use Lazarus to make programs for the tablet (I somewhat like python but not enough to write gui apps, while I absolutely loathe C/C++).

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Yes, I have been pondering this perspective. I like Karrigell - have you ported this to an IT? Still, it is not going to be a bog- simple toolkit.

I had thought about forking Pythoncard and trying to teach it to generate pyGtk instead of wxPython. The major shortcoming of Pythoncard is no support for sizers, but this would not be a problem for the ITs.

However, I think I will play with Eagle a bit first.

Do you know anything about the 'Easy' package that Nokia INdT are prepping? It will include Eagle, apparently, and I like the title.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

I haven't actually used Karrigell, but some years ago I made such an app with Snakelets, which is in the same vein.It ran (still runs, in fact) on my Zaurus C760, so there's no reason it couldn't on the 770...
Nowadays i'm playing with web.py. Now THAT'S a bogs-simple toolkit ! And for the kind of personal stuff that's going to run only on 127.0.0.1, its lack of features actually is a feature...

Hadn't even heard of it... must have missed something, where did you see it mentioned ? I must get in touch with Gustavo.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Second post down:

http://groups.google.com/group/eagle...427a46723691de

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Squeak may interest you.

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Is there a usable port available for the ITs? I had heard that something was cooking but did it ever come to fruition?

(I do not think that Squeak is what I am looking for - if it was then the OLPC folks would have used Squeak instead of Python as its main implementation language. I read somewhere that Alan Kay approved the decision to use Python as the main OLPC implementation language.)

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

Following up on fpp's suggestion of making a personal web application I think I am going to try to get Karrigell[*] running on a 770.

However, I remember reading somewhere that the 770 Opera browser's support for Javascript was limited. Is this true?

If so, is there a spec for what it can/cannot do?
[*] http://karrigell.sourceforge.net/

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

I and others have compiled the Squeak VM for the IT and it works fine. However that's about as far as anyone seems to have gone except for a few individuals who have worked solely within Squeak to overcome the most immediate problems (namely RMB and text input issues). I hope sometime to look in detail at hildon-ising the VM *and* at what mods can be made to a Squeak image to make it more IT-friendly.

I don't know the reasons for the choices made by OLPC but I suspect they were the most practical for achieving their objects. Maybe the number of developers and/or popularity were major factors in which case the decision to use Python was a good one IMHO. In fact I plan to use Python myself to investigate the various API's before attempting any Squeak VM integration. For me at least there is no "Python vs Squeak" issue (if anything it would be "Python vs Smalltalk") because the comparison would be ignoring Squeaks strong points such as Morphic and EToys (note there *is* EToys (ie, Squeak) for Sugar).

Re: Novice/casual development tools
 

You can use too python onboard with PyGTKEditor , a small text editor for python source code for maemo :)